


Love is Somewhere Safe

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Series: Monica is Alive AU [2]
Category: Baccano!
Genre: Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-03-28 20:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Huey finds himself falling in love with Elmer. He is not exactly elated about the prospect. Monica Is Alive AU, so this is going in a poly direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude: first love

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know that creating an AU where a major character didn't die just 'cause you said so is _very therapeutic_? It is _so_ therapeutic. If you care, originally the answer to "why is Monica alive" was "Oh that's very simple, you see [TRAIN RUSHES BY LOUDLY];" as I've worked a little more in this AU I think what happened is that she tried to say goodbye to Huey before she turned herself in and Huey (rightfully) told her that that was terrible idea and things changed from there. Fermet is dead, he died painfully, idk the details but you don't have to worry about him here.

Sometimes, Huey still dreams of his first love.

She was the young woman who lived next door—she may have even still been a girl by some standards. She can’t have been more than a few years older than Huey himself, but to a ten-year-old boy whose life had not yet been touched by disaster, she seemed mature and kind and perfect enough to idolize. First, he loved her like he might have loved an older sister. But when the witch-hunters took his mother, she opened her arms to him as he sobbed, and the warm, sweet embarrassment he felt in her embrace may have been the stirrings of something else.

A week later, he watched blood drain from her face in terror as his mother spoke the words that would tear the village apart:

_If it pleases the Inquisitors, if my innocence is proven, let it serve as proof that every man, woman, and child who accused me or testified against me participated in the Witches’ Sabbath I saw._

His mother, innocent of witchcraft, drowned with a smile on her face.

All but the barest handful of the townspeople were seized before they could leave the town square.

His neighbor, who had fed him over the past week, and washed him, and made sure he slept—who had wiped all his tears and promised him that the inquisitors would soon realize their mistake and bring his mother back to him—was bound and carried off before his eyes. A few days later, he watched her burn, her eyes wild with pain as the flames made their way up her body. Not a single sound escaped her throat.

He doesn’t dream of the rest of the village anymore. The nightmares of his mother, stripped to the waist and bleeding, faded away years ago. He no longer has night terrors in which he is accused, found guilty, and fed to the flames under the light of his mother’s final, gentle smile.

But sometimes he catches sight of his first love in a dream, and instantly he is ten years and a week old again with the world’s treacherousness laid out before him for the first time and he shouts after her _why, why_ ; but whether she is smiling or whether her face is contorted with fear and pain she never answers him before she fades into the rest of the crowd and he shudders awake to find his whole body coiled and sore.

These days, though, he wakes up beside Monica. Sometimes she’s awake already, tracing his muscles with her deft fingers, trying to smooth away his tension. More rarely, she is still asleep, and he has the opportunity to watch her like she’s always watched him. He considers those times a blessing. Maybe in another decade or so he’ll let himself do so while she’s awake, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Later, once it’s all sorted out, Monica thinks she may have been the first one to catch on.

It’s because she still watches Huey. It’s been years—almost a century—but she hasn’t tired of simply seeing his face, the curve of his shoulder, the back of his neck. She has every facet of his being memorized, and so she is the first to notice that lately, something’s been different when he looks at Elmer. Once she notices it happening, it takes her almost a month while to recognize it, and when understanding clicks into place, she feels like she’s been stabbed in the heart:

There’s something like longing in his eyes.

And she knows it from when they were still students, after the first play and those awful months of solitude, before the second play. Every now and then she used to catch him looking at her like that across the classroom—with focus like a lighthouse beam, eyes narrowed in thought as he picked apart his own emotions. He still looks at her that way, sometimes, as if amazed by how _much_ he feels. And now he’s turning that same intense gaze towards Elmer.

She has to flee as soon as she puts two and two together. Huey and Elmer both will see through her in an instant if she stays. So she runs down to the park, runs the whole way, finds a bench and sits and presses both hands over her mouth to try to compose herself. Her shoulders shake. Her thoughts run in circles and they get worse with every passing second and just as she’s asking herself if Huey will at least be kind enough to devour her before he stops loving her—

She hears him call her name.

She curls up and hides her face as the lump in her throat threatens to escape as a real sob. But she feels him sit next to her, feels his arm settle around his shoulder and pull her close, and the shape of his body is too familiar for her to not be comforted, just a little. It’s enough that she can open her eyes. And now he’s looking at _her_ that way, intense and undeniable and fiercely loving, and she’s the one who initiates the kiss but he answers it just as desperately. It’s not the kind of thing one should do in public. She doesn’t care. She drinks him in as if he’s the only thing keeping her alive.

It’s a long kiss, and it dissolves slowly into shorter, gentler ones, both of them reluctant to pull away. Huey’s hand rests on Monica’s waist and hers are framing his face as Huey finally speaks again.

“Hey, Monica… we never had a honeymoon.”

Her eyes widen. It’s not what she expected to hear, at all. Huey looks at her sideways, not quite directly, and that means that he’s not saying everything he’s thinking. But she can see, she can hear, that he is serious about his words.

“Let’s go away for a bit. Just the two of us, I don’t care where.”

She pulls him back into another kiss so that he doesn’t see her melt into tears of relief.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't click ahead to read the notes at the end, they're just nattering.

They decide to take a month in Naples, because their senses of irony are nearly identical. They leave Elmer in charge of the house and let a friend of Monica’s know that they’ll be away, too, in case Elmer gets it into his head to wander off. Halfway through the trip, they receive a letter from the friend informing them that they’d had precisely the right idea. Huey rolls his eyes and tosses the letter into their room’s fireplace.

The honeymoon itself is lovely. Monica hasn’t forgotten her fear, but it slips away as she has time to spend with Huey, her dearest Huey. And he is almost aggressive with his affection. He says _I love you_ in a low voice as if he’s never been so serious about anything in his life, he _keeps_ saying it, says it a dozen times a day.

So maybe that’s why she gets complacent; why she lets herself wonder aloud, as they board the ship that will bring them back to the States, whether Elmer will be home when they get there.

Huey’s arm around her shoulders tenses; she sees his face shift minutely. And then suddenly all the fear from a month ago is back and her skin feels like ice and she struggles to breathe.

“I don’t want to talk about Elmer right now,” Huey says.

“All right,” Monica answers in a small voice.

And he leans in for a kiss, and it’s quick and passionate, but this time Monica isn’t reassured.

They don’t speak again until they reach their cabin. Monica suspects that Huey could spend the rest of the night not speaking, so she has to be the one to start:

“We need to talk about this.”

Huey shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, fiddling with something in their suitcase. But Monica won’t be dissuaded. They’ve tried to ignore it. They succeeded, for a little while. But it isn’t going to keep working.

“Huey, either we talk about this now or we have to do it with him looking over our shoulders and insisting that we smile the whole time.”

He shuts the suitcase with a snap and whirls to face her. “Of course he would,” he says, almost a snarl. “That idiot Smile Junkie, sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and paying no attention to how people actually feel. Why do we even tolerate him?”

“Because he’s our friend,” Monica answers at once, a little taken aback at her husband’s vehemence. He hasn’t spoken of Elmer like that in lifetimes. For a moment, she wonders if she’s been wrong about what’s going on—if he really is just angry at Elmer for something she hasn’t noticed.

Except—

He’s not quite looking at her.

His gaze is averted, and Monica knows her husband. She knows what that means.

“Huey…”

“Monica,” he says forcefully, trying to head her off, “I—”

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” she interrupts.

There’s silence for a moment.

She’s right.

She knows she’s right because if her question _really_ confused Huey, he would have gaped at her, baffled by what would be an inconceivably strange accusation if only it weren’t true; but it has to be true, because he sneers instead.

“Why the hell would I be in love with _Elmer_?”

It’s not like him to speak to her that way; it’s not like him to speak about Elmer that way. Not now, at least. But Monica doesn’t flinch, and Huey falters when he sees that she remains certain. She tries to say his name again. “Huey—”

“I love _you_ ,” he insists, forceful once more. “No one, _nothing_ matters to me as much as you do.”

“I know—”

“Elmer is _insane_ and he’s a self-serving asshole who only ever does anything worthwhile by chance.”

“I _know_ , Huey—”

“So why would I ever feel about him like I do about you? If—if the world were ending and I had to choose you or him to save, I would save you and watch him burn without a moment’s hesitation—”

She steps toward him then and seizes his face in both hands and cuts him off with a desperate kiss, because he’s hurting himself, trying to argue this, and she doesn’t think he knows it. He answers the kiss, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into a crushing embrace. He’s still trying to make his case with his passion and she’s trying to soak up all his fear and doubt so that he can be honest and within minutes they find themselves in bed, trying to explain with lips and fingers and movement what words would only complicate. They know it won’t be enough to put this matter to rest. But for a little while, it’s all they need.

After, they lie together intertwined and still and silent. The ship pulls away from the dock with a distant sounding of its horn. The rocking motion of its progress may have lulled them both to sleep if their thoughts were not whirling.

Finally, Huey rolls onto his back to stare at the cabin’s low ceiling and heaves a long sigh. He squeezes his eyes shut before he speaks.

“Why the hell did I fall in love with Elmer?”

Monica watches him. It does hurt, a little, to hear him admit it—but not for the reason she expected. It hurts because it’s hurting _him_. So she strokes his chest gently and tries to find the words that will answer his question.

“I think, to you, love means somewhere… safe.”

He looks back at her, his face dubious. “Elmer is the farthest thing from _safe_.”

They both know without a doubt that their friend would betray them in a heartbeat if it would get someone else to smile.

“He can’t even sit tight and look after the house for a month like we asked without running off to make someone smile.” Huey shakes his head. “He’s the last person in the world I’d trust with anything.”

“Anything that didn’t involve smiles, at least,” Monica agrees, with a bit of a wistful smile herself. Huey answers it with his own wry smile; then, catching himself, he makes a noise of exasperation in the back of his throat.

“I don’t believe this.”

“He’s infectious,” Monica says, her smile growing.

“Like _typhoid_.”

“Like laughter,” she counters.

“I suppose there’s that, too.” Huey sighs. “All right, he’s infectious and I’m infected for some insane, suicidal reason. I really thought I’d had enough of being betrayed by people I care about, but sure, let’s open myself up to the possibility again.”

“But even if he did, you wouldn’t be surprised, right?” Monica asks, her face growing serious once more. “Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe knowing someone would betray you in an instant is just as safe as knowing they never would.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Huey says. And, a split-second later, “You’re right, but it doesn’t make any sense.” He shifts onto his side so that he’s facing her and searches her eyes. “Monica, I don’t want this to hurt you,” he says, reaching out to stroke her cheek. “ _You_ mean everything to me, and if my being in love with Elmer is going to make you doubt that, I’ll stop.”

She closes her eyes for a moment under her husband’s gentle touch, then shakes her head and speaks. “It’s all right,” she says. “I was scared that you would stop loving me, at first—”

“Never,” he says immediately, his eyes serious.

“Mmhmm. I know.” She places her hand over his and smiles. “So… it’s all right. He makes you happy, right?”

Huey presses his lips together—not quite willing, perhaps, to admit it. But she knows the answer. She’s known for a long time that she didn’t open Huey’s heart all on her own. And how can she be jealous of Elmer when she’s so grateful for his help?

“Don’t stop for my sake,” she says. “I don’t think I’m in love with him, myself, but I do care about him. I want both of you to be happy.”

A short laugh from Huey that’s more irony than amusement. “Well, we’ll have to see how he feels about all of this first.”

And then they have the same realization at the same time, and their eyes widen in perfect unison.

“Oh,” Monica says, pink dusting her cheeks.

“Oh,” Huey agrees. “We’re going to have to tell him right away.” They can’t hide it, any more than Monica would have been able to hide her fear from him a month ago. A single faked smile from either one of them and he would know that _something_ was up.

Huey sighs and flops onto his back once more. He tries several times to speak but fails to find the words. Finally, he repeats his question from earlier: “Why the _hell_ am I in love with Elmer?” He’s not angry anymore, or reluctant. Just _exasperated_.

Monica snuggles up to him and presses her lips to his cheek for just a moment. Mock-serious, she says, “Maybe you just have bad taste.”

Another half-laugh, and he looks at her with fondness bright in his eyes.

“I don’t think _that’s_ my problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huey, she's a serial killer and he's a sociopath, your taste might honestly be the problem here. 
> 
> Anyway this is all I've written thus far, and updates will probably be somewhat erratic as this AU is my stress relief world. I write in it when I am sad.


	4. Interlude: fire and water

All of Monica’s worst nightmares are about the plays.

As soon as she realizes she’s in the theater, she tries to wake up; but she’s pinned in place, and by the time the curtain rises, the awareness that it’s a dream has faded away and all she can do is sit there as too-familiar stories are played out in front of her. And always, always, Huey is at her side.

It’s worse when it’s the second play. When he watches them act out her past and every time she glances over he is stoic, face blank, never turning towards her. When the play ends and he stands, still silent, still not looking at her, and turns his back and walks away from her. When it’s the second play, her throat won’t open to let her protest.

She wakes up sobbing.

But her sobs wake Huey, too, the real Huey, who is panicked by her distress even when half-asleep and asks if it’s alright to hold her and does so as soon as she says he can, his arms enclosing and protecting her. He is solid enough to chase away the nightmare. Solid enough to remind her that that never happened; he never saw the second play and when he drew the story of her past out of her, he burned with anger _for her sake_ , never at her. And slowly, she calms down again as the beating of his heart brings the present back to her.

When Huey asks what upset her, she says _a nightmare_ , and he doesn’t make her explain any further than that.

Elmer thinks she should, though. –Because she has to talk about it with _someone_ , and he’s easier than Huey. He’s not shy about giving advice, but he isn’t angry when she stubbornly disregards it. Talking to him is like running her hand through cool water, mutable and unresisting.

And he helps get her out of her own head in a way that Huey can’t, sometimes. When bitterness and hatred rise in her heart like a distant tide, neither of them tell her she’s wrong. But Huey’s own anger is always ready to join hers, to intertwine with it and reach out, and it’s not that that isn’t satisfying occasionally but she knows, they both know, that they can get carried away. Elmer, on the other hand, doesn’t resent her for her ferocity but he subtly reminds her that not everything is terrible; there are things like baby rabbits and hot cocoa and his stupid puns that have to pass through three different languages before they start making sense. Eventually he wins a smile from her, then a laugh; and before she knows it, her breath is coming easier again.

She’s grateful to him, and she misses him when he’s gone. Everything in her heart is centered around Huey, yes—but she knows they’d both be different people without Elmer to make them smile.


	5. Chapter 5

In a comfortable first-class train car, the last leg of their journey home, Huey is leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed. To most people, he supposes it would look like he’s sleeping. But Monica knows him well enough to read the furrow in his brow.

“Huey?” she asks, the rest of her question only implied.

“Just thinking,” he answers. Then he sighs and opens his eyes, turning his gaze out the window. “I have no idea how this is going to play out.”

He keeps running simulations in his mind, trying to plot out the conversation he has to have with Elmer so that there’s as little indignity and embarrassment involved as possible. But he can’t come to a single conclusion. One moment he can imagine Elmer laughing off a declaration of love entirely, cracking jokes and elbowing Huey in the ribs. The next, he imagines quite the opposite: Elmer’s face crinkled not with a smile but with disgust as he rejects Huey out of hand. Neither of those extremes feel right, so he knows he’s letting nerves get the better of him, but he has no context with which to determine how Elmer _will_ react.

Ideally, he wouldn’t be telling Elmer in the first place; he’d keep it to himself, or between himself and Monica, until it faded away. He isn’t looking for Elmer to love him back. He knows his friend better than that. Love is a preference, before it’s anything else, and Elmer’s only preference is for smiles—not for one person over another.

But trying to keep it to himself would turn his rare smiles sour, and the damn Smile Junkie would never leave him alone then.

Monica, silent next to him, takes his hand. He glances down at it from the corner of his eye. She means to reassure him, he’s sure, and to some extent it does; but the warmth of her palm and the familiar shape of her hand also remind him of how lately, he’s been thinking that he wants to hold Elmer’s hand, too.

Damn it all, he’s fallen hard. It isn’t like him, but then again, when has he ever managed to be like himself when dealing with Elmer?

“Huey,” Monica says finally, “whatever happens, you’ll still have me.”

He squeezes her hand, just for a moment, to acknowledge the sentiment. He wants that to be enough. It’ll be enough, if it has to be; he’s been happy with Monica for almost a century, was happy with Monica this past month. It’s just this nagging question of what to do with his new-found love that’s kept him from being comfortable. He wants to put it to rest as soon as possible.

“Do you mind if I talk to him on my own?” he asks Monica.

“That’s fine,” she answers. “I can stop by Annabelle’s and thank her for looking after the house.”

“Thank you.”

“Mmhmm.” She snuggles close, and Huey finally looks away from the window and a little more towards her. He lets himself lean on her and feels some small percentage of his tension fade away. He loves her. That isn’t going to change.

Monica smiles, so slightly that she may not have even realized it herself. Then she makes a small, thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. “That’s if he’s not waiting for us at the station, I suppose.”


	6. Chapter 6

He’s waiting for them at the station. And of course they don’t even have the option of hiding their frustration behind false smiles. They take refuge in old, old habits instead: Huey’s face falling into a stoic blankness, and Monica tracing his every movement with her eyes.

“…Those aren’t the faces of a pair of lovebirds who’ve just returned from a great honeymoon,” Elmer teases them. He’s grinning, of course, as always, but he sounds a little confused. Huey can’t bring himself to study his face long enough to figure out whether he looks confused, too.

“Um, Elmer?” Monica offers after a moment, seeing that Huey is reluctant to speak. “I was going to call on Annabelle to thank her, so can you and Huey head home first?”

Elmer tilts his head so far that it looks like his neck is going to snap. “That’s no problem. But is everything okay? You two aren’t smiling at all.”

“We’re fine,” Huey says. His voice comes out sounding curt. He supposes that that doesn’t surprise him. “There’s something I want to talk to you about, though.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“At home,” Huey says.

So he sees Monica off in one buggy and boards a second buggy with Elmer and the luggage. He remains silent, directing his gaze exclusively towards the street. But out of the corner of his eye he can see Elmer bouncing his leg anxiously.

A few minutes into the brief trip: “I don’t suppose—”

“No,” Huey cuts in.

“Aw, come on, you didn’t even let me finish my question!”

“‘I don’t suppose I can get you to smile in the meantime,’ right?” Huey proposes, still not turning towards his friend.

Elmer grumbles acknowledgment, and Huey has the sense that if he weren’t so on edge, that alone might have been enough to get a grudging smirk out of him. Elmer is ridiculously predictable. Monica’s right that that’s a kind of reliability, maybe even a kind of safety. Huey has known _this_ part of the conversation was coming since they boarded the train. It’s what comes next that he still can’t figure out, and it makes him feel ignorant and unguarded, and he doesn’t like it.

Being in love with Monica has never felt like this.

But as much as he tries to cite that as evidence that this _isn’t_ love, he can’t convince himself. There have been other things that _do_ feel the same. He’s found his cheeks reddening when Elmer wins a smile from him and triumphant delight flashes in his eyes. He’s found himself wondering what it would be like to trace his fingers over Elmer’s skin. —And, more bluntly: Elmer’s scars. He hasn’t seen them many times, but they’re burned into his memory well enough; and when he lies in bed half-asleep, not awake enough to stop himself, he’s found himself wanting to run his palm (his mouth) over them and convey somehow that Elmer _should not have been hurt that way_ , that Huey will do whatever it takes to keep him from being hurt again.

Which is _idiotic_. Elmer doesn’t care about things like that. What use would he have for a love that’s fierce-eyed and protective, that feels like a burning knot in Huey’s chest?

If Huey wants Elmer to accept his love (is that what he wants?), it’s going to have to be a love that makes him smile, and Huey is at a loss for how to reach that.


	7. Chapter 7

When they arrive home, Elmer shoulders all the luggage and walks inside, whistling cheerfully and tunelessly. Huey follows behind, no closer to a solid plan of action than he’s been. Distantly, he realizes that it feels nice to be home, but he knows that he’s not smiling. Elmer brings the suitcases to the second floor, where the bedrooms are. By the time he comes back down, Huey’s taken a seat in the parlor. He’s staring at nothing. He doesn’t like feeling this way.

“Hey, Huey?” Elmer says, his voice light. “I don’t know what’s up, but you know you don’t have to talk about it for my sake, right?”

A mechanical nod.

“Did I do something that hurt you? If I did, I apologize.”

A shake of his head, just as mechanical.

“Is there something I can do?”

“You sound desperate.”

He doesn’t mean for the observation to escape him, but it falls from his lips. It’s a cruel thing to say. The fact that Elmer isn’t hurt by it, that he just gives an embarrassed chuckle, only makes it seem crueler.

“Yeah, I am,” Elmer admits easily. “I mean, you and Monica both seemed on edge about something before you left, too. I was hoping the two of you would come back with big smiles on your faces, so it worries me that you didn’t.”

“We did spend plenty of time smiling while we were away, for the record.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” Elmer gives a visible sigh of relief and grins. “That’s good to know.”

And then, before he can lose the momentum of speaking (before he can lose his nerve), Huey strings the necessary words together: “I’m in love with you.”

An unpleasantly long pause. When he glances at Elmer’s face, he finds that Elmer looks stunned. But then his eyes light up.

“Huey, your poker face is _incredible_! Have you thought of going into comic thea—”

“I’m not joking,” Huey snaps.

A silent beat; then Elmer’s smile goes rueful. “Yeah, I guess you’re not.” He sits down, not in the seat of the armchair across from Huey but perched on its arm. In a moment, even the rueful smile fades as he considers Huey, his face unreadable. Huey stares back. He’s far too old to pout, but he feels sullen.

“Are you going to say anything?”

“Well, I’m trying to figure out what kind of response will make you smile,” Elmer says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Which it is. “What do you want to hear?”

“Honesty might be nice,” Huey answers. He sounds cold, calloused, sarcastic. It’s probably not how one should sound while confessing one’s love, and it’s not how he wants to sound.

But Elmer still doesn’t mind. He only turns his gaze away for a moment and gives a light sigh. “Honesty, huh? That makes sense.” A pause; then, without turning back towards Huey, he lifts and drops his shoulders in a silent shrug.

He doesn’t know what his “honest” response is.

And then it occurs to Huey that Elmer is just as stymied as to how this conversation should progress as he is. Neither of them know how to feel. Nothing in their prior interactions has built any guidelines for this, and a misstep bears just as much risk for Elmer as it does for Huey. Exhaling in an effort to diffuse some of his tension, Huey closes his eyes for a moment. Elmer’s peering at him when he opens them again.

“Sorry,” he says. “I know that’s a crummy response to a confession of love.”

Something flashes in Huey’s memory, and his lips quirk upward on their own. “I told Monica I needed time to think about it, when she first confessed to me.”

At his smile, Elmer perks up again. And he’s heard this story, of course. “Oh yeah, that’s right!”

“So I’m not angry.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Elmer crosses his arms and tilts his head in thought. “Maybe I should take some time to think about it, too? …I honestly don’t know how to respond off the top of my head, Huey, I’m sorry.”

Huey leans back in the couch and looks at his friend. He doesn’t feel quite as ungrounded as he did before, now that he sees Elmer’s uncertainty. “It’s all right. I’m not expecting you to love me back. I know that’s not—” _Something you’re capable of._ “—how things work for you.”

Elmer nods.

“I just didn’t think I’d be able to hide it. At some point I’d have to fake a smile, after all.”

“No, anything but that!” Elmer says in mock horror. Then, more thoughtfully, “Let me make sure I have this straight—you still love Monica, right? But you love me too?”

It’s the bluntest phrasing of the issue Huey has heard yet—neither he nor Monica have juxtaposed the two thoughts so closely—but it isn’t inaccurate. He nods.

“Alright. See, I have nothing against that as a general thing, but…” Elmer runs his hand through his hair and rubs the back of his neck. “You know what I’m like, Huey. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Huey sighs at Elmer’s question, though frankly it’s the obvious one. “You ask that like I’ve thought about it and made the measured decision to be in love with you. That isn’t how this works.”

“Oh right. —I mean, I basically get that love doesn’t work that way for most people, but I thought maybe you were an exception.”

“No. Though it’s not for lack of trying.”

A bit of a smirk from Elmer. “Heh. You don’t seem too bent out of shape about failing,” he says.

“…Am I smiling?”

“You sure are. You’re trying to hide it, though.”

“Neither one of those actions is conscious.” But he supposes he can feel his own smile now, a wry smirk at his attempt to regulate his emotions and at Elmer’s unfailing ability to blast through that. He casts his gaze about the living room as he continues. “I tried to reason myself out of this, for Monica’s sake and for the sake of my own—pride, I suppose, or my self-conception. And when that failed, I tried to figure out the logical reasons I’d fallen for you. That didn’t work either, because it isn’t logical. We don’t have a lot in common. You’re not particularly attractive. I don’t think you’re a good person.”

“Ouch, man,” Elmer breaks in, grinning still because of course he isn’t taking offense to any of this.

“And yet I’m in love with you,” Huey continues. He’s more sure of it with every time he makes himself say it out loud. “So, no, it’s not a measured decision by any means.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

This time, Huey is aware when the corners of his lips curl upwards. Somehow—despite the fact that Elmer usually has all the sensitivity and subtlety of a brick—when it really counts, he knows what questions will get straight to the heart of the emotions Huey tries to keep under control.

“I’d prefer if it were a little more sensible,” he confesses. “But I might as well deal with what I’ve got.”

“And what you’ve got is a big ol’ crush on me~” Elmer beams, teasing a little. Then his face grows a little more serious. “What does Monica think?”

The other obvious question. Huey sighs, the smile slipping away from his face. “We talked about it on the way home,” he said. “She said she’s fine with it…”

“But?” Elmer prompts, hearing his hesitation.

“But she gives me anything I ask for, right?” Huey looks away, trying to mentally factor Monica’s concern for him out of their recent interactions and discern what emotions lay underneath it. He thinks she’s telling the truth, but he can’t shake the worry that she’s forcing herself to accept this sudden change. “What if she’s only putting up with it because she wants me to be happy? What if she’s not letting herself be upset about it, for my sake? If it’s going to hurt her, I don’t want any of this. I still love her more.”

He glances back at Elmer, half-hoping that he’ll wave away his worries. But instead, Elmer nods his agreement. “They’re fair concerns,” he says. “She can definitely be self-sacrificing. Did you ask her about that specifically?”

“I told her I didn’t want to hurt her…”

“Hmm.”

It seems that Elmer isn’t sure that that’s enough, either. Huey’s unease only grows, and he doesn’t want to make this request but he knows it will be foolproof: “Can you keep an eye on her smiles for a little bit?”

“Oh!” Elmer lights up. “Yeah, I can! That’s easy!”

“Don’t tell her you’re doing it.”

“You shouldn’t keep secrets from your wife,” Elmer chides. But he nods. “It’s a deal. I’ll let you know if something’s up. But in that case, you have to talk to her about it some more, okay? You two have to decide what needs to happen, because I like both of you, and I like your smiles. I really like knowing that I get to see your smiles even though they’re so rare. So I don’t want to become something that’s going to make smiling hard for either of you. If that means leaving your lives for a little bit, I can handle that.”

Huey’s heart twists. He doesn’t want it to come to that. But Elmer’s right: if Monica needs him to get over Elmer, and he can’t do that any other way, then he knows that’s what they’ll have to do.

He takes a deep breath to calm himself—to regain himself. Then he stands. “I think I’ll go bring her home, then,” he says.

“Sounds good.”

But once Huey’s put on his overcoat, just before he’s out the door, Elmer catches his hand and Huey feels a warmth spark up his arm. He looks from their clasped hands up to Elmer’s face and, damn it all, he’s quite sure that he’s at least a little pink.

“Huey… thank you.”

There’s a light smile on his face, but it’s not his normal grin. There’s a different kind of earnestness in it this time. More muted, but more something else, too.

“I never would have thought that anyone could fall in love with me, knowing everything the way you do. It’s really unexpected, but… it feels nice.”

Huey looks back at his friend. If he’d been pink before, he’s definitely red now. He doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he only nods and holds Elmer’s hand tighter for a brief second. Then he makes himself let go, and Elmer’s grin returns to normal.

“Anyway, go get your wife. I bet she’s not paying poor Annabelle any attention by now ’cause she’s too busy thinking about you.”

Another nod, and then Huey takes refuge in pulling the brim of his hat low and heads out the door.


	8. Interlude: the new rules

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little more discussion of Elmer's past than is altogether pleasant in this one, heads up

A few years ago, Elmer C. Albatross noticed something:

He’s changing.

He’s not the same person he was when he became immortal, or even the same person he was fifty years ago. The basics are still there, of course. He wants others to smile—he cares about that more than anything else. He wants others to be happy, and if he can contribute to their happiness, all the better. There’s nothing more important to him than this. There is no fear of this changing. He reassures himself of this over and over: there is, there will never be, any fear of that changing.

But _something_ is changing.

Or maybe it’s just that he’s learning something new. He’s always been able to recognize happiness: he learned it from the faces of his parents and all their friends. He’s never seen purer joy than theirs as they dragged a knife blade across his chest, as they drove a poker into the wound after to cauterize it, as they pressed a white-hot brand to his shoulder and explained (over his screams, his sobbing) that the runes on its surface thanked him for his protection, for being a god who could carry all of their pain. Huey’s asked him if that’s the joy he’s after—if he wants to see that kind of smile again—and Elmer knows that giving a straightforward “no” is better for Huey’s happiness than appearing to think about it for any great length of time. But Huey doesn’t seem convinced, and anyway, Elmer _doesn’t_ think about it for any great length of time. It would be nice to see someone that happy again, but even a minor improvement in someone’s joy is a victory. He doesn’t discriminate. He knows joy when he sees it, and he celebrates it.

What he’s never known is what joy _feels_ like. He doesn’t know what it feels like to be happy and to smile genuinely. He looks in the mirror and sees himself wearing the same smile he learned from his parents, and it doesn’t nettle him like others’ fake smiles do, but he remembers wearing this smile when they had him tied up with the knife to his throat, and he thinks that maybe he wasn’t happy then. Maybe he was—because he was useful to them, because it would be the last pain—but maybe he was scared to death instead. He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t want to remember. He doesn’t know what the answer to that question would do to him, so instead he chases after other people’s joy and he prods them into it, because it makes him feel good, and for each second that he’s made someone happy, he can believe that he’s smiling with genuine satisfaction. He’s never minded the nickname Huey gave him, _Smile Junkie,_ not when Huey first spat it at him in disgust and not now when he says it in exasperation; in fact, he’s pleased that Huey put it so aptly. He _is_ a junkie, scraping by from fix to fix. It’s a really good description. Huey’s smart.

But now—now there’s something else.

He realized it when he came home from a long trip one night to find that Huey and Monica had had some kind of disagreement. Neither of them would have called it a fight, because if it had been a fight it could have been something major, could have driven a wedge between them or spoken to some larger issue, could have meant that _oh no, he-slash-she will never love me again_ , and so on and so forth, et cetera. It wasn’t the first time. They were both still prone to catastrophizing, and in such situations it fell to Elmer to soothe their terror long enough for them to remember how much they cared about each other. He relished the task, of course. Anything to bring their smiles back.

But this time, something had been different. This time, when he’d come across Monica sitting at the dining room table alone, face drained of blood, eyes staring determinedly at nothing and her ears mostly unhearing, he’d noticed that she wasn’t smiling and of course he wanted her to smile, but there was still… something. A feeling of warmth, a feeling of exhaling. It felt kind of like putting down luggage that you’ve been carrying for a while, except inside his chest, and although he knew he was better off not smiling right then if he wanted Monica to listen to him, he still wanted to.

When Huey came home from his brooding walk, an hour or two later, the same thing had happened: even though he wasn’t smiling, Elmer felt a lightness in his chest at seeing him. Once he’d patched things up between the two of them (honestly, what would they do without him?), he’d retired to his own room and tried to identify it.

It felt like being home, he realized. Not the building itself, which they’d only just moved into anyway, but Huey and Monica felt like home to him, and he liked that. He stayed up all night that night, considering the ceiling, considering _himself_ at a length he doesn’t usually go to. And he came to a few conclusions.

Conclusion one: he feels a level of comfort with Huey and Monica that has nothing to do with the satisfaction of winning a rare smile from them. Maybe it has to do with the amount of time they’ve spent together—two lifetimes, at least—or maybe with their familiar acceptance of who he is and what matters to him. He can’t pinpoint the reason, but that doesn’t really matter.

Conclusion two: this comfort may be—in some faint way—a form of happiness, genuine happiness, the kind of happiness that makes other people smile spontaneously. This conclusion is exciting and terrifying all at once, and Elmer still doesn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it because of what it means for the rest of him. But still, as he thought about his friends that night, Elmer felt his mouth curl into a gentler smile than the one that usually decorated his face.

Conclusion three: he needs some new rules.

The old rules stay. _I’m not lying_ is only to be used when he’s really not, because trust has to mean something; no killing people who don't want to die, even for a smile; all smiles are absolutely equal. And more rules than that, rules that systematize, rules that keep him _him_ when he might otherwise mold himself to the people around him. Because there’s no point in making others smile if there’s not some core of self-awareness to be satisfied by it. He has to stay himself.

And to stay himself, he has to add two new rules.

The first is an addendum to an existing rule: his own smile has no greater weight than anyone else’s. So if he finds himself too comfortable, if he ever finds himself thinking that Huey’s smile or Monica’s matters more to him than another’s, that means it’s time to pack up and go elsewhere for a while. They have each other, and there are people out there who need Elmer more than they do. He can always come home to them. But if he lets himself care too much about them, he’ll stop being himself, and he has to avoid that.

The second is a matter of analysis, of marking his own personality: when he finds himself feeling that comfort, it must be noted. Out loud, whether or not there’s someone there to listen, with the same words each time for consistency’s sake. The words he chooses for this purpose are _this feels nice_ , because it does.

He doesn’t tell them about the change, though. He wants to keep this to himself for a little longer, until he knows what exactly is changing. Besides, Huey and Monica are both really smart, and there’s a possibility that they’re picking up on the pattern already, if only subconsciously: their smiles shift a little every time he says it, too slightly for them to notice.

But Elmer notices, so maybe he isn’t changing too much after all.


End file.
